Auto Sales – It’s the Dealer’s Dozen Summer Blowout!!

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This month, the BrandingWire posse takes on auto sales. No marketing backgrounder needed on this one – we’ve all experienced what it’s like to go into a car dealership. We all know how cars are branded and sold in the retail environment. Now, the BW marketing gurus give their suggestions on what works, and what needs to change.

But wait! Before you click on the links and read our various posts on the topic, we want you to take part! Tell us your stories – good, bad, or ugly. Click on the Comments and give all of our readers a paragraph on what you’ve experienced. How would you change the automobile sales process?

You see, the marketing blogger community, and certainly the group at BrandingWire, want to see better branding and marketing practices. And the best way to do that is to proclaim, with a loud voice, what is good, and what really stinks. Join us as we seek to provide input to the auto industry on what we, the customers, would like to see for a buying experience!

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For the past 15 years, my experience with auto dealerships has been on the dealer side, as my husband owns a tiny used car dealership. In that time, here is what *I* have seen – from customers:

1. Unrealistic expectations. As in, “I want to buy a car for my daughter to go off to college. It has to look good – she prefers red – and it can never leave her stranded on the side of the road. And I only want to spend about $600.”

2. Big cajones. We’ve had customers take cars on a test-drive for HOURS at a time and have to go looking for them based on where they said they were going. We’ve had them come back and have to transfer their garage sale purchases from OUR car to their car. We’ve spent countless hours waiting for customers who said “I’m just going to get the money, I live right up the street” and then never return.

3. Procrastination. We’ve had them take their car and paperwork, and NEVER transfer the title into their own name, then come back to us as long as TWO YEARS later and demand that we get them a duplicate title. Or, as in one case this year, simply demand their money back and say they ‘don’t have time to mess with’ getting it transferred.

4. Liars, cheats and thieves. We’ve taken our share of rubber checks, and we’ve had people take cars for test-drives only to have them come back claiming problems that did not exist on the car before they left, or actually take parts off the cars.

Fortunately, we’ve also had a few people who have been a pleasure to work with. As for my husband, the dealer, I have seen him encourage single moms to either buy something elsewhere or come back another time when he has different cars, rather than put them in a car he doesn’t think will run well for them. I’ve seen him give people their money back even though they’ve signed the “As Is” statement. I’ve seen him refuse to sell a car wholesale to another dealer if it has a particularly bad set of problems, even though he has been screwed by other dealers so many times we don’t even count anymore.

I’m sure the dealers will get plenty of blame in this installment of “Branding Wire,” and some of it’s deserved. But I’m here to tell you that sometimes, it’s not the customer getting screwed – it’s the business owner trying to feed his family.

LOL yeah he ‘gets it’ alright – from every direction!! LOL Thanks, Steve, I know it’s not reasonable to expect folks to actually sympathize with car dealers, but the fact is they’re not all rolling in money and they’re not all out to screw customers. I appreciate you letting me vent! 🙂 ~ Janet

I’ve bought 2 cars from dealers in my 30 plus years of driving – one was good, one was bad. I remember them both. Really appreciate Janet’s comment – vent or not 🙂

The part about buying a car that bugs me – and sets it apart from other major purchases – is getting passed from sales person to “the room” where the money guy sits (it was a guy in both instances for me). I’m not much on the back and forth of bargaining. If the price is fair – and I assume it is – thats what I’ll pay. Give me a little extra – like floor mats or a nice key ring – and I’m happy. Maybe a break on the interest rate. But “the room” makes me nervous.

I totally agree with your comment Bob!
Here’s a juicy story. A Ford dealership in CA had a regular customer bring in an SUV for service. While he was waiting, he was hanging around the showroom floor, looking at new models, and let it be known to the dealer principal that he and his family were going on vacation as soon as the car was fixed. The dealer bee-lined it to the parts dept. and instructed the manager to (under threat of dismissal) NOT have the correct part in stock…. all in an attempt to make the sale of a new car.

Not a frequent occurrence, but it’s stuff like this that makes for bad reputations.

I’d like to back Janet up a bit as well, but with a different perspective.

I’ve recently made the move from a semi-decent I.T. job to car sales because it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.

I love my job. I work with a prestige brand and love what I sell. Our product range is brilliant and expanding/improving continuously. The amount of car you get for your money nowadays is incredible – from a safety, reliability or technology perspective, these are amazing machines!

I meet people everyday and I try to treat them with respect and consideration. I do my best to advise them on what would be best for them and, while I do try and sell what we have in stock (what’s the alternative, send them to another dealer?), I’d never sell an unsuitable car. I believe that by selling someone the right car with a fair deal, you’ll sell them their next five cars… sell them the wrong car or treat them unfairly and you’ll never see them again!

I’ve been trained extensively. We’re taught to sell from a four step process – Qualify, Appaise the Trade-In, Demonstrate the New Car, Negotiate/Close. This is to promote consistency in the experience for all customers. If done properly it will have brought the customer and salesperson through a process that ensures the salesperson and customer are clear on what the requirements are, that the trade-in has been appraised fully and transparently and that the new car has been demonstrated to build the customer’s desire. All this must happen before the negotiation process.

In my experience so far I’ve seen customers being pressured due to targets or because a particular car has been targeted to be sold. That pressure is used rarely and is sometimes justified as the customer won’t make a decision. But no amount of pressure negates the fact that that customer can walk out at any time.

This seems unfair until I think of the number of times that customers have tried to hoodwink (or outright lie to me). When appraising a trade-in I ask how many owners the car has and has the car been involved in an accident. I’ve been blatantly lied to MANY times as people hope I don’t notice a resprayed panel…
I’ve also lost count of the number of times that I’ve spent an hour or more with someone, gone through pricing and specs, done test-drives, answered every question they had and then they went to a competitor with my quote and, for the sake of less than a few hundred dollars, they ordered a $75,000 car through the competitor. If you want internet pricing, order from the internet. I believe my customer service and extensive knowledge is worth something.

I’d love for the motor industry to change so that customers didn’t walk into my showroom with their defensive shields on full power, it would make my life so much easier.
In every other aspect of life you give a person benefit of the doubt and hope that they will exceed your expectations. You try to trust them until they do something to damage that trust. For me as a Car Salesman, you distrust me by default and I have to work VERY hard to break down that distrust. Much of the time I can’t.
I’d also love for customers to extend to me the respect I deserve as the brand expert that I am and as a human being. I can see how easy it is for a salesperson to get jaded and go down the “old style” selling route, but for us who try to stay on the higher ground it’s a losing battle as customer after customer treats us like cheats, liars or enemies.

I promise everyday to try and be fair to people and treat them with respect while doing my very best to excel at my chosen profession. If customers could make a similar effort before shopping for their cars, maybe we can ALL help to change the motor industry for the better.

Re-reading it I may have gone on a bit of a rant, and being a front-line salesman instead of a marketer I was very focussed on the Customer Experience rather than the whole marketing mix.

I’m working through all the articles that you guys have written about this topic and I’m grateful that you’ve found the time to address this. I’ve gotten some great ideas from you all and if I can get any buy-in from the upper levels to implement even a single element of your suggestions, it’ll be time well spent.

I made it here only now. Wow! This is a great conversation. I’d like to thank Janet and John especially for providing perspective from the other side of the deal, so to speak. My sales rep. is a used car person, although he has enough seniority to sell anything on the lot. I have found him to be honest, sincere, and service-oriented, whatever “service” mean to his customers.

The system is intimidating though. Having the open floor, the other people milling around… I think that robs from the experience of having a one-to-one conversation.

All valid, especially your opinion John. The process of healing will take more than just improving the customer experience. It necessitates a fundamental shift in the way customers are approached from the start. By opening the door to doing business in a clean fashion upfront, customers can expect a good time at the store. There are educational websites that inform customers of tactics they can use to avoid being cheated out of money and put into a car they didn’t intend to purchase. Dealers around the country, regardless of the integrity of dealers like Janet and John, are typically ruthless in their pursuit of sales. Now more than ever in the current down market.

The change needs to happen on the dealer level. It will mean sacrificing some sales in the short term. It will also mean having every dealer in the country getting together to act based on good dealer principles and be proactive in their efforts to provide a real quality experience. As the retailer it is your responsibility to uphold a moral standard.

Next steps include abandoning the dealer philosophy of pushing deals that simply cannot occur. I have owned a marketing company focusing on Direct Mail advertising for two years now. Initially it was almost impossible to win business because we refused to put unrealistic offers on the flyers. Lately, we have seen business rise dramatically as dealers are searching for more ways to positively brand their locations while still driving retail sales on the short term.

I applaud the stories of Janet and John, as they are clear indicators of the business making a shift in the right direction, towards an application of morals and ethics as the driving forces behind car sales. If applied properly, the business will again be robust on a consistent basis, not on again off again. Also, marketers will enjoy working with their clients more. Don’t get me wrong, I love my clients, however, you did hire us for a reason. Let us do our job.